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Program in German Studies

Last updated: August 15, 2024 at 11:12 AM

The German section of the Department of German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature offers instruction in the German language and literature aimed at providing access to many aspects of the culture, past and present, of Germany, Austria, and parts of Switzerland. German has always been one of the prime languages of international scholarship, and the reunification of Germany in 1990 has drawn renewed attention to the European and worldwide importance of that country. German majors have gone on to graduate school in German literature to prepare for a career of teaching and research or to professional schools in law, medicine, or business, entered government work, or found employment with publishing companies or business firms with international connections.

Learning Goals

German Studies draws upon history, music, political science, philosophy, the arts, and literary studies to examine German culture past and present. Students in German Studies learn about German language and literature and become knowledgeable about the cultures of Germany, Austria, and parts of Switzerland. German Studies prepares students for careers in teaching and research, as well as professions such as law, medicine, business, and government.

Students in German Studies will be familiar with a wide range of methodologies and frameworks for the analysis of German culture, and able to follow current findings and debates within the field. As it engages students with extensive existing research in multiple disciplines, our curriculum is particularly committed to advance students’ understanding in a variety of areas.

Core Skills

Students completing the minor in German Studies will be able to:

Speak and comprehend German to function competently in daily life;
Read and write German at a level of critical literacy;
Perform cultural analyses;
Develop cultural competence: they will understand social norms, behaviors, values, taboos.

Students completing the major in German Studies will in addition be able to:

Write and speak German sufficiently to participate in discussions, write critical essays and research papers, and give oral presentations;
Read and interpret both primary and secondary texts and/or data from a variety of disciplines, historical periods, and cultures;
Conceptualize and develop complex research that questions existing assumptions;
Articulate an understanding of the multiple roles of German culture in history.

Knowledge

Students completing the minor/major in German Studies will have a foundational knowledge of the German language and will understand the complexities of:

The history of modern German literature and culture, 1750 to the present;
Cultural developments in modern German-speaking central Europe, such as in the arts, cinema, literature;
Central issues such as the Nazi era and the Holocaust, the role of gender and minority discourses, and their reflection in German literature, arts, and cinema;

Social Justice

Since the Holocaust, Germany has served as a model of social justice. The discrimination and subsequent murder of six million Jews in Germany and the exclusion and persecution of many other minorities has left an indelible mark on German culture to this day. Directly and indirectly, our courses shed light on the meaning of the struggle for social justice in various periods of German history. Minority discourses continue to be front and center in German literature and politics today.

Within our courses in German Studies, students are prepared to:

Analyze systems of power and privilege;
Examine the causes, manifestations, and consequences of institutional discrimination of every kind;
Understand and respect a range of cultural perspectives.

Experiential Learning

To some extent all language study is experiential. Courses in German language are student-centered and interactive. We strongly encourage our students to study abroad for a summer, a semester, or even a year in a German-speaking country to immerse themselves fully.

Upon Graduation

The German Studies curriculum prepares students for a wide range of careers. Graduates of our program are applying their skills and knowledge to academic and professional pursuits in medicine, law, education, government, social service, public policy, religion, counseling, international relations, journalism, publishing, business, and the arts.

How to Become a Major

The department welcomes all students who wish to become majors in German Studies. Non-majors and majors are offered computer-aided instruction in German, and work in the classroom is supplemented with regular German-speaking events. Majors in German Studies are encouraged to spend their junior year in Germany or any other German-speaking country. Students are especially encouraged to participate in the Berlin Summer Program, a six-week intensive program taught in the center of the German capital. Please contact the Study Abroad office for more details.

In addition to the major in German Studies, the section offers a minor in German Studies and participates in the program in European Cultural Studies (ECS). The abbreviation GECS denotes German and European Cultural Studies, which offers courses that can be chosen as electives for the minor (or major) in German Studies. Courses in history, philosophy, and music may also be counted towards the German major or minor if a significant section of the syllabus is dedicated to German Studies content. Some of these courses are cross-listed with German Studies while others might be considered on a case-by-case basis. Please consult with your German Studies Advisor to assess individual course selections.

Faculty

Kathrin Breuer, Undergraduate Advising Head for German Studies and Director of the German Language Program
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Stephen Dowden, Chair and Undergraduate Advising Head for the European Cultural Studies Program
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Sabine von Mering, Director of the Center for German and European Studies
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Requirements for the Minor

Advanced language study is required by taking GER 103a.
Advanced literature study is required by taking GER 105b.
Students must take 2 additional elective courses from among the following: German courses numbered above 100, GECS courses and cross-listed courses.
Successful completion of GER 30a or a departmental language exemption exam is a pre-requisite for the minor.
No course with a final grade below C-, and no course taken pass/fail, can count toward fulfilling the requirements for the minor in German Studies.

Requirements for the Major

ECS 100a (European Cultural Studies: Proseminar/Modernism) to be completed no later than the junior year.
Advanced language and literature study: Required are: GER 103a, GER 105b, and GER 109b, plus any five German literature/culture courses above GER 100, at least two of which must be conducted in German.
Foundational Literacies: As part of completing the German Studies major, students must:
- Fulfill the writing intensive requirement by successfully completing one of the following: GECS 130b, GECS 131b, or GECS 188b.
- Fulfill the oral communication requirement by successfully completing one of the following: GER 103a or GER 105b.
- Fulfill the digital literacy requirement by successfully completing one of the following: GER 30a or GER 106b.
Majors wishing to graduate with departmental honors must enroll in and complete GER 99d (Senior Thesis), a full-year course or GER 99b (Senior Essay), a one-semester course. Before enrolling, students should consult with the coordinator. Candidates for departmental honors must have a 3.50 GPA in German courses previous to the senior year. Honors are awarded on the basis of cumulative excellence in all courses taken in the major and the grade on the honors thesis or essay. One semester of the senior thesis or the honors essay may be counted toward the six required upper-level courses.

A major in German may obtain the Massachusetts teaching certificate at the high school level by additionally completing requirements of the Education Program. Interested students should meet with the program director.
No course with a final grade below C-, and no course taken pass/fail, can count toward fulfilling the requirements for the major in German Studies.

Courses of Instruction

Expand All

(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students

GER 10a Beginning German

Four class hours per week.

Intended for students with little or no previous knowledge of German. Emphasis is placed on comprehending, reading, writing, and conversing in German and the presentation of basic grammar. Class work is enhanced by various interactive classroom activities and is supplemented by extensive language lab, video, and computer-aided exercises. Usually offered every year in the fall.

GER 20b Continuing German

Prerequisite: A grade of C- or higher in GER 10a or the equivalent. Four class hours per week.

Continuation of comprehending, reading, writing, and conversing in German, with an emphasis on basic grammar concepts. Special attention is paid to the development of speaking skills in the context of cultural topics of the German-speaking countries. Extensive language lab, video, and computer-aided exercises supplement this course. Usually offered every year in the spring.

GER 30a Intermediate German
[ dl fl ]

Prerequisite: A grade of C- or higher in GER 20b or the equivalent. Four class hours per week.

In concluding the development of the four language speaking skills--comprehending, writing, reading, and speaking--this course focuses on finishing up the solid grammar foundation that was laid in GER 10a and GER 20b. It also presents additional audio and video material, films, radio plays, and newspaper and magazine articles, as well as a variety of extensive interactive classroom activities. Usually offered every year in the fall.

GER 98a Independent Study

May be taken only with the permission of the chair or the advising head.

Readings and reports under faculty supervision. Usually offered every year.

GER 98b Independent Study

May be taken only with the permission of the chair or the advising head.

Readings and reports under faculty supervision. Usually offered every year.

GER 99b Senior Honors Essay

Students should consult Undergraduate Advising Head.

Usually offered every year.

GER 99d Senior Thesis

Students should consult Undergraduate Advising Head.

Usually offered every year.

(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

GECS 130b The Princess and the Golem: Fairy Tales
[ hum wi ]

Conducted in English.

Compares Walt Disney's films with German and other European fairy tales from the nineteenth and twentieth century, focusing on feminist and psychoanalytic readings. Usually offered every second year.

GECS 182a Kafka: Novels, Stories, Aphorisms
[ hum ]

Open to all students. Conducted in English.

A detailed exploration of Kafka's works, life, and thought. Emphasis is given to his place in the larger scheme of literary modernism. Usually offered every third year.

GECS 188b Human/Nature: European Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and What to Do About It
[ djw hum oc wi ]

Open to all students.

Introduces European attitudes towards climate change as reflected in policy, literature, film, and art, with a focus on workable future-oriented alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism. Usually offered every second year.

GER 102b Küche, Kochen, Kuchen: Advanced German Grammar, Pronunciation, and Baking
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: GER 30a.

Designed in response to student demand, includes weekly pronunciation sessions focused on tough sounds like 'e', 'l', 'r', 'ü', or 'ch' are combined with grammar review and bi-weekly baking sessions. Usually offered every year.

GER 103a German Culture Through Film
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: GER 30a.

Approaches an understanding of contemporary German culture through film by focusing on one of the most fascinating and turbulent of national cinemas. Landmark films from the 1920s to the present and pertinent essays, articles and studies will provide a historical perspective on decisive social and cultural phenomena. Major themes include Vergangenheitsbewältigung, multi-ethnic societies, terrorism, life in the GDR, and cultural trends at the beginning of the 21st century. Students learn also about the technical side of filmmaking and produce their own short film under professional guidance. Usually offered every second year.

GER 105b Survey of German Literature from Its Beginnings to the Present
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: GER 30a.

Examines the relationship between individual and their society throughout history on the basis of fictional and nonfictional German texts (poetry, philosophical texts, short prose, and plays), films and artifacts (photographs, paintings, monuments, coins and tools). While this course focuses on the work of German-language writers, it offers also insights into German social history and the socio-political changes accompanying the transformation of a medieval God-given society into a multi-ethnic society of the 20th and 21st century. Usually offered every second year.

GER 106b Migration, Kultur, Synergie
[ djw dl fl hum ]

Prerequisite: GER 30a.

Investigates the experience of refugees and immigrants in present-day Germany and discusses processes of social transformation. Through fictional and non-fictional texts and film, we gain an understanding of their cultural, economic, political and artistic contributions and of cross-cultural collaborations. Usually offered every second year.

GER 109b Meisterwerke Deutscher Kurzprosa
[ fl hum ]

Conducted in German.

Tailored to suit the needs of advanced intermediate students, this course explores in detail several short prose masterworks by writers including Martin Buber, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Arthur Schnitzler. Usually offered every third year.

GER 110a Goethe und seine Zeit
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: GER 30a. Conducted in German.

This upper-language course uses Goethe's dramatic, lyric, and prose works to introduce students to the literary periods of the enlightenment, Sturm-und-Drang, German Classicism, and Romanticism. We will read Iphigenie, Werther, Faust I, and a selection of Goethe's famous poetry. Usually offered every third year.

GER Digital Literacy

GER 30a Intermediate German
[ dl fl ]

GER 106b Migration, Kultur, Synergie
[ djw dl fl hum ]

GER Oral Communication

GER 103a German Culture Through Film
[ fl hum oc ]

GER 105b Survey of German Literature from Its Beginnings to the Present
[ fl hum oc ]

GER Writing Intensive

GECS 130b The Princess and the Golem: Fairy Tales
[ hum wi ]

GECS 188b Human/Nature: European Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and What to Do About It
[ djw hum oc wi ]

GER Core Courses

ECS 100a European Cultural Studies Proseminar: Modernism
[ dl hum oc ]

Explores the interrelationship of literature, music, painting, philosophy, and other arts in the era of high modernism. Works by Artaud, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Mann, Mahler, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Kandinsky, Schiele, Beckett, Brecht, Adorno, Sartre, Heidegger, and others. Usually offered every fall semester.

GER Cross-Listed

COML 100a Introduction to Global Literature
[ dl hum oc ]

Core course for COML major and minor.

What is common and what is different in literatures of different cultures and times? How do literary ideas move from one culture to another? In this course students read theoretical texts, as well as literary works from around the world. Usually offered every year.

COML 116b Nietzsche: An Introduction
[ hum ]

A basic introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts and writings. Usually offered every fourth year.

COML 120a Disordered Loves and Howling Passion: European Romanticism
[ hum ]

Introduces European Romanticism from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. This course integrates literature, painting, music, and philosophy. Works by Beethoven, Hölderlin, Schubert, Delacroix, Wordsworth, Mary Shelly, Verdi, Schlegel, Kant, Claude David and others. Usually offered every second year.

COML 150b Critique of Erotic Reason
[ hum ]

Explores transformations in erotic sensibilities in the novel from the early nineteenth century to the present. Works by Goethe, Austen, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Schopenhauer, Bronte, Chekhov, Garcia-Marquez, Kundera, and Cormac McCarthy. Usually offered every third year.

COML/ENG 106a The Lyric Imagination from Romanticism to the Present
[ hum ]

That the poetic imagination could be not merely a source of pleasure, instruction, and inspiration, but a source of insight into the meaning of being, a way of connecting the outer world of nature and the inner world of the spirit, a source of ontological, ethical, and political truth, was a conviction entertained by many poets in English and German from the Romantic period to the present day. The course will consider these ideas in the poetry of Blake, Novalis, Eichendorff, Hölderlin, Wordsworth, Goethe, Keats, Whitman, Rilke, Eliot and Celan. Special one-time offering, fall 2024.

ECS 100b European Cultural Studies Proseminar: Making of European Modernity, 1250 to 1650
[ hum ]

Investigates how the paradigm of what we know as modernity came into being. We will look at the works of writers and philosophers such as Descartes, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Petrarch, Ficino, Rabelais, and Montaigne. Artwork from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance will be used to understand better what "the modern" means. Usually offered every spring semester.

FA 47b Renaissance Art in Northern Europe
[ ca ]

A survey of the art of the Netherlands, Germany, and France in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cultural developments such as the invention of printing, the Protestant Reformation, and the practices of alchemy and witchcraft will be considered through the work of major artists. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 123b Reformation Europe (1400-1600)
[ ss wi ]

Survey of Protestant and Catholic efforts to reform religion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Topics include scholastic theology, popular piety and anticlericalism, Luther's break with Rome, the rise of Calvinism, Henry VIII and the English Reformation, the Catholic resurgence, and the impact of reform efforts on the lives of common people. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 126a Early Modern Europe (1500-1700)
[ oc ss ]

Survey of politics, ideas, and society in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Focuses on the changing relationship between the emerging modern state and its subjects. Topics include the development of ideologies of resistance and conformity, regional loyalties and the problems of empire, changing technologies of war and repression, and the social foundations of order and disorder. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 131a Hitler's Europe in Film
[ dl ss wi ]

Takes a critical look as how Hitler's Europe has been represented and misrepresented since its time by documentary and entertainment films of different countries beginning with Germany itself. Movies, individual reports, discussions, and a littler reading. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 137b World War I
[ ss wi ]

Examines the opening global conflict of the twentieth century. Topics include the destruction of the old European order, the origins of total war, the cultural and social crisis it provoked, and the long-term consequences for Europe and the world. Usually offered every second year.

MUS 56b Romanticism in European Music and Literature: Breakups, Breakdowns, and Beauty
[ ca oc ]

Open to Music majors and non-majors.

Romantic art abounds in depictions of hallucinators, madwomen, obsessives, and other individuals whose thoughts and behaviors deviate sharply from societal norms. This semester, we'll seek to understand the cultural and historical significance of the ways in which late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music and literature portray exceptional emotional, mental, and physiological states. We'll investigate the connections among madness, genius, physical illness, and the supernatural in the Romantic imagination, and also think about the artistic techniques contemporary writers and composers used to represent 'extreme' psychology. Our approach to this material will be comparative rather than strictly historical: we'll look at works written in different countries and different time periods within the period, grouped together by theme. Usually offered every third year.

NEJS 37a The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry
[ hum ]

Open to all students. May not be taken for credit by students who took NEJS 137a in prior years.

Why and how did European Jews become victims of genocide? A systematic examination of the planning and implementation of Nazi Germany's 'Final Solution to the Jewish Question' and the Jewish and general responses to it. Usually offered every year.

NEJS 148a Inside Nazi Germany: Social and Political History of the Third Reich
[ hum ]

Provides an overview on the social and political history of Nazi Germany (1933-1945) covering the most significant topics pertaining to the ideological basis, structure and functioning of the regime as well as the social and political mechanisms that led millions of Germans to perpetrate war and genocide. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 159a Modern Jewish Philosophy
[ hum ]

Surveys the contours of modern Jewish philosophy by engaging some of its most important themes and voices, competing Jewish inflections of and responses to rationalism, romanticism, idealism, existentialism, and nihilism. This provides the conceptual road signs of the course as we traverse the winding byways of Jewish philosophy from Baruch Spinoza to Emanuel Levinas. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 181b Film and the Holocaust
[ hum ]

Open to all students.

Examines the medium of film, propaganda, documentary, and narrative fiction relevant to the history of the Holocaust. The use of film to shape, justify, document, interpret, and imagine the Holocaust. Beginning with the films produced by the Third Reich, the course includes films produced immediately after the events, as well as contemporary feature films. The focus will be how the film medium, as a medium, works to (re)present meaning(s). Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 107b Kant's Moral Theory
[ dl hum ]

An examination of the main philosophical issues addressed in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason from the perspective of their relation to works specifically belonging to his ethical theory: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Metaphysics of Morals. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 167a Hegel: Self-Consciousness and Freedom in the Phenomenology of Spirit
[ hum ]

Offers a close reading of Hegel and pays special attention to his analyses of the changing patterns of understanding and self-understanding and the way in which he opens up these transformations for the reader to experience. In his modern paradigm, the Subject and the Object of thought necessarily affect one another's potential, essence, and fate. And through a rational comprehension of role of Spirit (Geist) in thought and the world, we can see how they become inextricably bound together. Indeed, for Hegel, the dialectic between subject and object provides the very ground for the self-aware and free subject to participate in modern life. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 168a Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
[ hum oc ]

Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or permission from the instructor.

An attempt to understand and evaluate the main ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason, the subjectivity of space and time, the nature of consciousness, and the objectivity of the concepts of substance and causality. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 179a God, Man, and World: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
[ hum ]

Prerequisite: One course in philosophy.

The subject of this course is Rationalism, the seventeenth-century European philosophical movement that maintains the supremacy of "pure reason" as a means of obtaining substantial truths about the world. This course analyzes key writings of the three most influential rationalist thinkers of this period, attempting to elucidate several themes that not only characterize these writers as rationalists, but which continue to inspire philosophers and others who attempt to come to terms with the nature of the world and human existence. Students will read substantial portions of historically significant original works are, dissect and criticize them, consider some of the respected secondary literature, and also consider their relevance to contemporary philosophy. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 182a Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
[ hum ]

An intensive study of Ludwig Wittgenstein's seminal work, Philosophical Investigations. This course should be of interest to philosophy and literature students who want to learn about this great philosopher's influential views on the nature of language and interpretation. Usually offered every second year.

POL 189a Marx, Nietzsche, and Twentieth-Century Radicalism
[ ss ]

Comparison of two powerful and influential critiques of modern politics and society. Explanation of Marx's work, both for its own insights and as a model for radical theorists; and of Nietzsche's work as an alternative conception of radical social criticism. Usually offered every second year.

THA 146a Theater and the Holocaust
[ ca djw ]

By studying plays and theatrical tools, students can gain insight into the Holocaust and what made it possible as well as its lasting impact. The course will examine how theater has attempted to represent the unimaginable as and communicate about the toxic appeal of antisemitic Nazi ideology, both in the context of the Holocaust and its legacy. Usually offered every third year.